Tag Archives: Genealogy

Have you been looking for your Great-great-aunt Ethel’s gravesite for so long, you suspect she’s still alive somewhere, snickering at your efforts to find her? We in the Special Collections Center of the Davenport Public Library understand. And we are … Continue reading →

In honor of National Grandparents’ Day, which is held the first Sunday after Labor Day, we though we’d share this lovely Hostetler Studio photograph of William Phelps Kimball with his grandparents, Major Eugene Hayward and Ellen Phelps Hayward. Eugene B. … Continue reading →

Included in our Hostetler Photograph Collections is a set of glass negatives showing the former Miss Helen Kelsey Watts in her wedding gown, in which she married Mr. Homer Brown Payne. While researching these images, we located a wedding announcement, … Continue reading →

Imagine….. A donor brings historic documents, written in French, to the Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center at the Davenport Public Library that were passed down through the family. Having no sentimental ties to the brittle, fragile papers, they bring them to … Continue reading →

One hundred years ago, there weren’t a lot of options for widowed mothers who needed help caring for their children. In Iowa and parts of Illinois, if a judge felt that the mother could not provide for her family, the … Continue reading →

One of the first things a genealogist learns is how to find obituaries, which usually appear in the local newspapers within two or three days after the date of death, if the deceased was a current resident. One of the … Continue reading →

Ancestry Library has finished uploading all of the 1940 Census images to its database. They are now working on indexing—at this posting, Delaware was finished and everything else is pending. Meanwhile, you can find your relatives by browsing the right Enumeration … Continue reading →

One of the questions asked on the 1940 Federal Census was the location of the person in April of 1935. A decade is a long time and people didn’t always stay put—and some moved more than once. The Census Bureau wanted to … Continue reading →

Are you having trouble researching your African-Americans ancestors before the 1870’s? Here are some tips for tracing hard-to- find ancestors back to the Civil War and earlier: The first suggestion is to locate your family in the 1870 Census. … Continue reading →

LIBRARY CLOSINGS!

The Special Collections Center and the Main Street library will be closed in the morning of

Saturday, July 25 9am-1pm

During the Bix 7 Road Race. The Library will open from 1 - 5:30pm that day

RSSC’s Featured Image

T. J. Kelley

Our featured image this month is a portrait of Mr. T. J. Kelley, photographed by J. B. Hostetler ca. 1918. We do not know anything about him other than his name, but we chose him because he is perfectly attired for the type of weather we have been having lately.